Shock of the Day

From The Associated Press: Documents from the U.S. Government Accountability Office show that more than three years of legal and bureaucratic disputes and protests resulted in staff shortages and the atrocious conditions at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

These disputes and protests involved hospital management, the Pentagon, Congress and, not surprisingly, IAP Worldwide Services, Inc. Why is this not a surprise? First and foremost, IAP is owned by Cerberus Capital Management LP, an asset management firm chaired by John Snow, former Secretary of the Treasury for the Bush administration. IAP is currently led by Al Neffgen and Dave Swindle, two former high ranking executives of Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR). In case you have been living under a rock for the last seven years, KBR is majority owned by Halliburton, of which Dick Cheney was previously Chairman and CEO. From what other debacle do we know the name IAP? The company was awarded a contract by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide ice and power generation to hurricane victims, including from Hurricane Katrina. After that natural disaster, approximately 91,000 tons of ice were purchased to assist with cooling food, medicine and sweltering victims of the storm. This ice eventually cost taxpayers more than $100 million but unfortunately the majority was never delivered due to government incompetence. In fact, after a government dictated route took him throughout the United States for one reason after another, one truck driver was quoted as saying "I dragged that ice around for 4,100 miles and it never got used".